Wake up! Montreal! : commercialized vice and its contributories

Wake Up ! Montreal

B. I. HAET,

PROTEGTBB

t

A Crime and Vice Breeder.

Wake Up! Montreal!

Commercialized Vice and
Its Contributories

By E. 1. HART

Secretary, Joint Committee of Co-operating Churches.
President, Prisoners’ Aid Association of Montreal.
President, Canadian Citizenship Association.

the witness press

1919

Digitized by the Internet Archive
in 2017 with funding from
University of Toronto

https://archive.org/details/wakeupmontrealcoOOhart

CONTENTS

Introduction
Five Master-Evils,

1. The Cigarette 3

II. The Drug Habit 9

III. Gambling 14

IV. Drink 20

V. The Social Evil 29

Contributories to Vice,

I. The Police 37

II. The Bench 39

III. The Law 42

IV. The Lack of Eeformative Institutions 46

V. The Lack of Proper Recreational

Facilities for Young Women .... 50

VI. The ‘^Movies’’ 55

VII. The Prevailing Immodesty of Female

Attire 60

VIII. The Delinquent Home 62

IX. The W ant of a Civic Conscience ... 68

ILLVSTBATI0N8,

A Crime and Vice Breeder Frontispiece

The Most Notorious House in Canada — No.

6 St. Justin St 32

The Fullum Street Female Jail 46

4. The Dining Boom in the Protestant Female
Jail 48

One of Our Public’’’ Schools on St.- Law-
rence Boulevard . ....... . 58

Map Chart — -Where Potential Criminals Are
Growing Up

66

WAKE UP! MONTREAL!

INTRODUCTION

There is an important distinction between
VICE and COMMERCIALIZED VICE, The
former is a habit physically and morally injur-
ious to the one who acquires it; the latter is an
organized business through which unscrupulous
persons seek to make money out of the vicious
inclinations of their fellows. The former can
only be successfully dealt with by moral and
religious forces; the latter must be eradicated
by processes of law, supported by enlightened
and resolute public opinion.

If vice were left to propagate itself alone
the problem would not be so difficult, but when
there are joined to it great commercial interests,
ready to back it up with immense capital, the
work of restraining its effect upon the public is
multiplied. Giant corporations are behind some
of our popular vices to-day. Provincial and
Federal legislatures may pass restrictive or even
prohibitive laws, but they mean little while it is
possible for the agents of these corporations to
slip bribes into the hands of corruptible legisla-
tors and officials. It is a sad commentary upon
our humanity that there is absolutely no vice so
—1—

deep, no sin so black, but that there are men
and women who can be found to invest them-
selves and their money in its propagation.

There are at least five vices characteristic
of modern civilization which have been commer-
cialized and are causing untold havoc among
multitudes in all classes of society. These five
^^MASTEB EVILS’^ are entrenched in Mont-
real, so much so, that some social experts have
declared that our city is ‘Hhe rottenest city on
the continent.’^

„2—

FIVE MASTER EVILS

I. The CIGARETTE.

The first master evil of which I shall speak
is one that is not considered by a large part of
our community as an evil at all. It is the
innocent-looking, little cigarette.

In placing the cigarette in the category of
vices, I fully appreciate the fact that, by the un-
thinking, the uninformed and the selfish, I shall
be denominated an ^‘intolerant,’’ a “fanatic,”
a ‘ ‘ Puritan, ” a “ molly-coddle ” or “ the limit. ’ ’ I
care not what I may be called so long as I am
able to persuade some of our young people to
accept and to act upon the scientific statement
that the cigarette is one of the most insidious
and deadly evils of the day; that it blights and
blasts health and morals, arrests development,
deadens the thinking faculties and makes suc-
cessful achievement impossible.

Dr. D. H. Kriss, a physician who has made
a special study of the cigarette evil, declares
that it is as great a national menace as alcohol
has. ever been.

A writer in Harper^ s Weekly says: “Cigar-
ettes are not mere rolls of tobacco. They are
not drugged with expensive poisons as charged,
but they have a peculiarity. The combination
of burning paper and tobacco makes a compound
which is neither tobacco smoke nor paper smoke,

—3—

but has a name which chemists know and a
smell which everybody knows. There is not
much of the new compound, but in what there
is of it lies the idiosyncracy of the cigarette.
Thomas A, Edison may be supposed to know
what he is talking about when he says: ^Acro-
lein is one of the most terrible drugs in its effect
on the human body. The burning of ordinary
cigarette paper always produces acrolein. That
is what makes the smoke so irritating. I really
believe that it often makes boys insane. We
sometimes develop acrolein in this laboratory in
our experiments with glycerine. One whiff
of it from the oven drove one of my assistants
out of the building the other day. I can hardly
exaggerate the dangerous nature of acrolein,
and yet, that is what a man or boy is dealing
with every time he smokes an ordinary cigar-
ette.’’

In giving evidence before Mr. Justice Co-
derre, in connection with a military exemption
case in January, 1918, Dr. J. E. Duhe, one of
the best known French-Canadian medical auth-
orities in this city, said: ‘^This war has shown
us doctors one thing that we feared, but which
we never thought so appalling; the prevalence
of diseases among the young generation. It is
true that the fine flower of our manhood has
already enlisted and responded to the call of
voluntary service, but the situation as, we find it,
is still very grave, and I express the wish that in
the near future the problem will be tackled with
energy by the Government.”

Asked by His Lordship to what cause he at-

4-

tributed most of the disease found, Dr. Dube
unhesitatingly replied: the cigarette ha-

hit/^ never could understand,’’ he cmtin-
ued, ‘^why tobacco companies did such enor-
mous busines:s. I do now, however. Our young
men are perverted, not so much by the excessive
use of liquor as by cigarettes. I have examined
scores of young men who confessed to me that
they smoked from two to five packages of cig-
arettes every day. In a very few cases, com-
paratively, I found disease due to the excess of
liquor, but the ravages of the cigarette habit are
beyond expression.^’

^‘The Little White Slaver/’ as Mr. Ford,
of automobile fame, calls it, must be held re-
sponsible for keeping out of khaki during the
AVorld’s greatest war, thousands of young men
in Quebec. According to one Montreal re-
cruiting officer, twenty per cent, of those who
were examined at one local recruiting station
were rejected because of their overfondness for
the cigarette.

Mr. Owen Dawson, late Secretary of the
Juvenile Delinquent Court of Montreal, in his
report for the year 1916, says: ‘‘Over eighty
per cent, of the boys before the Court during
the year were cigarette smokers.” Judge
Choquet, of the same Court, says that we can-
not deal too severely with the evil. He stated
not long ago that fully ninety-five per cent, of
the cases of theft among the boys brought be-
fore him, were due to a desire either to go to
picture shows or to obtain cigarettes.

So seized were the members of our Canadian
Parliament with the harmful character of cig-

—5—

arettes a few years ago, that they unanimously
passed an act making it a crime for any one to
sell or give cigarettes or cigarette-papers to per-
sons under sixteen years of age, and for any
youth of that age to have cigarettes in his pos-
session. That law is a dead letter in Montreal.
It is so dead that boys, hardly out of their baby-
clothes, can walk along any of our streets,
stand in any of our public places and boldly
puff away at cigarettes without challenging the
attention of the police or even the rebuke of an
elder.

Some idea of the alarming growth of the
cigarette habit in Canada may be gathered from
the following statistics: In 1876 the ' cigarette
was practically unknown in our country ; in
1900, 100,000,000 were manufactured; in 1915,
1,088,858,656; in 1916, 1,307,276,750 and in
1917, 1,664,709,973. In four years the manu-
facture of cigarettes has doubled. This tre-
mendous increase is of course, due to the War,
when in the name of patriotism, enterprising
tobacco companies, supported by well-meaning
individuals and organizations, fairly deluged
our boys at the front with cigarettes. The
popularity of the cigarette among our men in
khaki has undoubtedly had its influence upon
the small boy at home who always loves a sol-
dier. He cannot understand why he should be
denied that which so apparently adds to the
happiness and comfort of his hero. To make
him understand, is the dilemma of some of his
anxious elders.

It is a wonder to me that every boy in
Montreal is not a cigarette fiend. There is

—6—

enough to make him become such. Wherever
he goes, wherever he looks — in the papers, in the
magazines, in the street cars, in the shops, on the
poster-boards, against the sky line in giant let-
ters of flame by night, even in our churches,
are compelling reminders of, and appeals to the
habit. Our boys must be saved from this curse !
The future manhood of Canada is in peril !

And not only is our young manhood in
peril, but our young womanhood as well. The
growth of the cigarette habit among girls and
young women has already reached the danger-
ous stage. Among prostitutes, dance-hall and
cabarejb habitues in Montreal, the use of the
cigarette has been common for years, but now
it is becoming no strange sight to see girls and
young women lounging about our first-class ho-
tels, at teas, bridge-parties and musicales, puf-
fing away with all the abandon of veterans. This
very day, in the early afternoon, in passing
through the tea-room of the Windsor Hotel, I
saw three girls — one with her feet stretched out
on the top of a chair — enjoying their cigarettes
in company with a couple of young men. To
one side was a table with empty wine glasses.
What kind of mothers will such girls make?
What kind of a race will spring from such a
stock ? And yet, these girls, if they were rebuked
for the habit, would hotly and pertinently reply
that they had as much right to smoke cigarettes
as their brothers.

So alive to the evils of the cigarette habit
have many in the United States become, that
now even business firms look upon it as an ene-
my to good business. In Detroit sixty-nine

—7—

merchants have agreed not to employ the cig-
arette nser — boy or man. W anamaker asks this
question of every applicant: ^‘Do you use cig-
arettes?/’ Marshall Field and Company and the
Morgan and Wright Tire Company have this
rule, ‘‘No cigarettes can be smoked by our em-
ployees.” Thomas A. Edison, in ansAver to the
question whether he used cigarettes, says: “I
never smoked one in my life and no man or boy
who smokes cigarettes can work in my labora-
tory. In my opinion there are enough degen-
erates in the world without manufacturing any
more by means of cigarettes ! ’ ’

—8—

IT. THE DRUG HABIT.

My attention was first directed to this vice
shortly after coming to Montreal some eleven
years ago. Two drug habitues with whom I had
become acquainted used to call at my house
whenever they were short of cash or in some
trouble — and that was not infrequent. One of
these men had been a member of the Sunday
School of my church as a boy and he had not
forgotten the way back to it. Once he had been
a clever and skillful mechanic, but drink and
drugs got a strangle hold upon him, he lost
position after position and finally became an
emaciated, staggering wreck, aimlessly wan-
dering about the city during the day and sleep-
ing at night in some park or yard or down at
the Old Brewery Mission. More than once I
have found him in a dead stupor lying at my
back-door.

Every effort was made by myself and others
to cure the poor fellow of the habit. He was
sent to a sanitarium and after a sojourn of sev-
eral months returned apparently a new man.
But though he was stronger physically his will
was still very weak; he had not been back tep
days before he had sold his clothes and was as
bad as ever.

There is no person more to be pitied than
the drug fiend, for there is no craving so in-
tense as that which possesses him. To satisfy

—9—

that craving men will lie, steal and commit any
crime, and women will sell their bodies and even
their children. More than once in Canada and
in the Orient have I witnessed the excruciating
tortures of a man who had been deprived of his
usual narcotic.

Dr. Edwin F. Bowers, in the last number
of an American magazine in speaking of Drug
Fiends says: ‘‘While of course, it is impossible
to obtain accurate figures on the subject, owing
to the veil of secrecy which mists and clouds it
over, it is conservatively estimated that there
are in America 1,500,000 victims of habit-form-
ing narcotic drugs — more victims of narcotics
than there are of tuberculosis.

“Men, women and even little children are
enslaved by the insidious habit which is sweep-
ing into its clutch each year an additional hun-
dred thousand victims. Fifteen per cent, of all
practicing physicians, and thousands of nurses
and druggists are addicted to narcotics. Drugs
are the common tragedy of the professional
world — of doctors, lecturers, actors, writers,
scientists, teachers and students — of all those
who seek doubtful relief from the penalty of
overwork, as well as mere sensation seekers, or
those who are attempting escape from violation
of moral law.

“Perhaps the most pitiful fact connected
with the use of drugs is the extreme youth of a
majority of the addicts. Narcotics are peddled
sometimes within one hundred feet of a school-
house and boys and girls of from fourteen to
eighteen become enslaved to their effects. Dr.
Jackson E. Campbell, city prison physician, tes-

—10—

tifying before the Senate Public Health Com-
mittee a few years ago, made the startling as-
sertion that within a radius of a few blocks of
Third Avenue and 149th Street, New York,
more than one thousands school children had ac-
quired the heroin habit, or were in danger of be-
coming ^joy riders,’ because of their use of the
drug. ’ ’

^^We are now consuming more habit-form-
ing drugs than all Europe combined. Our con-
sumption of opium is far greater, per capita,
than that of China, long looked upon as the
worst of all drug-sodden countries. . . .Since
1860 there has been an increase of three hun-
dred per cent, in the importation and consump-
tion of opium in all its forms in America as
against only one hundred and thirty-three per
cent, increase in population.”

The article of Dr. Bowers is a startling and
an appalling revelation of the drug habit in the
United States, but what about the extent of the
habit in Montreal ? It is impossible to give
even approximate figures in regard to it, but
from what can be learned from various sources
the habit is alarmingly on the increase.

The hundreds of gamblers who play night
after night in our numerous clubs and who live
upon their nerves must have their ‘‘dope;” the
thousands of professional prostitutes, whose con-
stitutions become weakened through vice and
whose spirits naturally become depressed, are
obliged, in order to continue in their business, to
resort to something that will quickly revive
them; the white slavers, the pimps, the crooks
and all who exploit their fellow-men in our
Underworld find their most potent ally in the
—11—

drugged drink — all these classes which form no
small proportion of this metropolitan city will
give one some shadowy idea, at least, of the
ravages and abuse of drugs. In addition to these
that I' have named, think of the large, unnamed
class who in clandestine and less revolting ways
turn to them for rest or stimulation.

To provide these_ various classes of our
population with drugs an illicit business is
carried on which, according to experts, is at
least two hundred times larger than the legiti-
mate, and the profits made are anywhere from
three hundred to three thousand per cent.

There is hardly a week that passes but some
man or boy appears in Court to answer to the
charge of selling cocaine or opium, or having it
in their possession. At the Windsor Street Sta-
tion, within the last week, a Eussian was ar-
rested with a suit case containing three hundred
one ounce phials of morphine valued at $5,000.
A few weeks ago at the same station a trunk,
shipped by a Chinaman for Toronto, was seized
by the Canadian Customs officer. It had secret-
ed between mattresses ninety-six tins of opium
worth $4,800. A year or so ago some sixty or
seventy pounds of opium were seized by In-
spector Belanger and his men in an old and
lonely farm house near the Back Eiver. In this
house was a complete manufacturing plant, the
largest plant ever raided by the police. It is not
very long since when at one time there were
brought before Judge Leet eleven boys and a
young man accused of selling cocaine. Every
one of the boys had plainly stamped upon his
features the hall-marks of a dope fiend.

—12—

It has been declared by those who know
Montreal’s Underworld that members of onr
police force are interested in the traffic in
drugs; that some of them even control it, while
pimps, Chinese merchants and others are their
agents or retailers. It is common knowledge
in the ^‘district” that a former police officer
made a fortune out of dope.

—13—

III. GAMBLING,

A third master-evil in our midst is
GAMBLING, In every part of the wide world
the gambling instinct is more or less developed.
In some countries gambling is little more than a
quiet affair between a few individuals about a
table with cards or dice and for small stakes.
In other countries it is almost a national habit,
an organized system that is yearly driving
thousands of persons into financial ruin, into
embezzlement, into prison, into the asylum and
into suicide.

Montreal is behind no other city in its de-
votion to gambling. In fact there is no city
on the continent that has a greater propensity
for it. We have our widely-known horse-races
at the Blue Bonnets, Dorval and other race-
tracks, patronized by Society’s ^^best” and at-
tended by huge crowds, where hundreds of
thousands of dollars are won or lost in a short
afternoon. We have our fashionable clubs where
the idle rich while away most of the day and
night in playing for prizes or money. We have
our underworld dens and secret clubs with the
most cosmopolitan lot of frequenters any city
can produce.

One night, not long ago, in company with a
police official and a friend, I made a tour of
some of the gaming places in our underworld.
Particularly were we interested in those that

—14—

we visited in ^ ^ Chinatown/ ’ on Lagauehatiere
Street. In one place we saw about thirty men,
in another about sixty — all gathered around long
tables, while at the head, the manager or the
book-keeper was kept on the jump collecting the
bets and drawing in the chips. The bets were
anywhere from ten cents to five dollars. One
Chinaman, the week before, we learned, had lost
one thousand dollars on the game in one of these
clubs. With a large number of our Chinese
population, gambling is a mania. They will
work in the laundry or shop all day and play
all night. It is no wonder that so many of
them resort to opium and cocaine. In close
proximity to the gambling dens that we visited
are opium joints, in one of which eight China-
men were seen reclining on couches or bunks
smoking away at the seductive drug. Adjoining
one of these joints is the store of the Chinese
Doctor’’ — a big, fat fellow, with one of the
hugest necks that I ever saw on a man. Cun-
ning is written in large letters upon the face
of the doctor and about him have gathered many
strange tales and legends. His store is the most
curious place in this city, weird in many re-
spec'ts, with dried snakes and other reptiles
hanging from the ceiling and suspended from
cases, with all kinds of bottles, boxes and jars,
filled with powders made from snakes and the
bones of animals — sure cures for various ma-
ladies.

Bad as are the Chinese gambling dens in
our city, they are not one whit worse, no, not
even as bad as many of the English and French
clubs and pool-rooms which are licensed by the

—15—

municipality or the Provincial Government.
Some of these places are veritable nurseries of
hell where boys as well as young men congre-
gate and learn the devious ways of vice and
crime. I have in my possession the names of
thirty-four clubs operating in Montreal, all li-
censed to^ sell liquors at any hour of the day
and every day in the week. In every one of
these places, gambling is going on, in some of
them that which is worse. A side-light was
thrown on one of our well-known clubs last No-
vember, in Court, when it came out in -the evi-
dence that several men spent the night in the
place with a number of girls, all under twenty
years of age. One of the men in the affair
missed his diamond pin and charged a member
of the party with its theft, or you and I would
never have heard of this unsavory incident. At
one of our fashionable clubs on Sherbrooke
Street, within the last month, one man in three
hours won $23,000. In a large office-building
on St. James Street, it is declared by those
who know, that from two to three hundred bets
are made daily at the tobacco stand on horse-
races. A large proportion, if not all, of these
races occur across the border in the United
States.

During the last ten days our local newspa-
pers have given full-page accounts of a Court
case of fraud in which an elderly citizen was
persuaded to part with $125,000 on the ponies
in Buffalo.

Since the crusade against horse-racing be-
gan in Canada the number of ^‘handbook men’’
has considerably increased. It was reported a

—16—

few months ago that there were at least fifty
such gambling agents plying a most lucrative
business in the downtown district alone. No
one knows how many are operating uptown.
When our Police Department had a reform
spasm last year, these handbook men, accord-
ing to the newspapers, received instructions that
they were well-known at headquarters, that no
longer the blind eye’’ would be turned upon
them, but that they would be closely watched
and severely punished if caught. For the in-
formation of the curious, I might say, in pass-
ing, that few of these handbook men, up to the
present, have been caught.

One of the most baffling forms of gambling
going on in Montreal at this time is through an
innocent-looking, little machine, popularly
know as the ^^Slot Machine.” It will be usual-
ly found in some pool-room, barber-shop, ice-
cream parlor, tobacco store or shoe-shine stand,
hidden away, generally, in some corner, unnot-
iced by the ordinary eye. This little machine is
more than coining money for its owners who
rent the space which it occupies.

Just what a serious menace the slot-mach-
ine has become in our city, may be gathered
from the evidence of a witness, interested in
the placing of these machines, who appeared one
day last year before the Board of Control. He
stated that he had received a profit from ten
machines in six weeks’ time of $4,000, while a
certain company, which he named, made a profit
of no less than $40,000 a month. As there are
several companies engaged in this business, the
annual sum expended by their patrons must be

—17—

enormous. The tremendous profits of these ma-
chines indicate that the chances against winning
are very great, yet in spite of this fact, they
are being played by an increasing number of
boys and men. Children have been known to
steal to gratify their passion. Complaints are be-
ing made continuously to the authorities from
parents, teachers, ministers and others regard-
ing this evil, and though frequent raids and
seizures have been made by the police, the thing
continues.

But alarming though the vice of gambling
is in Montreal, it is made more alarming by
reason of the fact that so-called Christian
Churches are countenancing some forms of it in
connection with their efforts to raise money.
Under a refined name, in apparently innocent
guise and for a supposedly good purpose, the
Gambling Devil is accomplishing at bazaars and
picnics what elsewhere is being accomplished
by the crack of an ivory ball or the turn of a
dice box. Across the face of a large and beau-
tiful church on Bernard Avenue, a few weeks
ago, I saw a huge streamer announcing to the
public that a raffle would take place on a cer-
tain date in the interests of the church. One
Sunday night, after service in a mission in
Emard Ward, I was attracted by the brilliantly
lighted basement of a church on Monk Boule-
vard. With my companion I went in and found
the basement crowded to the doors with all kinds
of things for sale. In a half-a-dozen different
nooks, I saw young men and women and little
children gathered about some wheel of fortune
or other instrument of chance, paying their

—18—

coppers or five cent pieces for a try. When
the Church stoops to such reprehensible means
for augmenting its funds, is it any wonder that
the vice of gambling fattens and thrives and is
becoming uncontrollable in this city?

It has been repeatedly stated by denizens
of the Underworld that Montreal is in the grip
of a powerful gambling trust, the members of
which are in a position to determine who and
who are not permitted to carry on the different
branches of the business. The trust has its
collectors who gather toll from all kinds of
sources, such as clubs, houses of prostitution and
slot-machine companies. A percentage of the
proceeds goes for police protection and the bal-
ance is divided among the members of the trust,
most of whom, if not all, are residents of Mont-
real. How real and powerful this reputed trust
is, time, we hope, will soon reveal.

-~19—

IV. DEINK,

A fourth master-evil in Montreal is DEINK.
Drink has been and continues to be the most
flagrant example of commercialized vice. Were
there no capital invested in breweries and dis-
tilleries, were not thousands of men in Great
Britain, the United States and Canada vitally
interested financially in the manufacture of
liquor, it would be a comparatively easy matter
to overcome the natural appetite for drink. But
these men with their invested millions have
stood squarely in front of every effort at re-
form and every piece of legislation passed to
reduce the evil of the traffic. By intimidation,
by persecution, by bribes, by violence and by
murder they have sought to gain their selfish
and cruel ends.

In the United States the day of capitalized
drink is about ended, in many provinces of
Canada it is ended, but in the Province of Que-
bec, in ninety municipalities — particularly the
great municipality of Montreal, the traffic is
‘Agoing strong.”

For more than two hundred years Mont-
real has been the stronghold of the Liquor Traf-
fic in Canada. Its breweries and distilleries
are the oldest in the land. More liquor has
been sold here and drunk, twice over, than in
any other Canadian city.

—20—

The saloon has been during all these years,
and is to-day, the social shrine and the munici-
pal drawing-room where unprincipled men have
gathered, shaped and controlled the destinies
of the city. There is not a candidate
for public office whom it will not seek to influ-
ence; there is not a police official, nor a public
contractor whom it will not try to bribe and cor-
rupt ; there is not a soldier boy anxious to fight
the battles of liberty and democracy whom it does
not covet and aim to debauch. What does it
care for victory or liberty or democracy? It
cares only for self, for patronage, for dividends.'
There is hardly a crime committed in our city
that it has not inspired or abetted. There is
hardly a young man or young woman who has
departed from the path of virtue, but who
has done so under the excitation of its spark-
ling but deadly glass. There is not a house of
shame but has its bottle. Those who steal virtue
know that alcohol relaxes the morals while it
stimulates unholy desires. The removal of liquor
from houses of prostitution in Cincinnati a few
years ago was followed by the closing of half
the houses. The saloon and the brothel are twin
partners in commercialized vice. But while the
saloon is the greatest sinner as a liquor institu-
tion, the licensed club is not far behind. In
some respects it is far worse. Many a young
man who would not be seen entering a saloon
will go into a ‘^respectable’’ club.

Of these clubs there are many in Montreal
and if their history were written the revela-
tions would stagger our citizens. God only knows
the number of tragedies that have been enacted

—21—

within their walls and the pitiful wrecks of
once promising young manhood that they have
turned adrift.

The David Club is still fresh in the mem-
ories of the residents of Maissoneuve. The
orgies that went on in that place are incred-
ible. Employees of a large company operating
in the neighborhood, receiving high wages, were
being continually inveigled into the club and
as a result the business and the discipline of the
company severely suffered. The club was owned
by local politicians — an unscrupulous and
powerful clique — and it was only after a long
and hard fight last year, on the part of the
company and the churches that it was closed
by the License Commissioners.

Keep out the saloon, the licensed club, the
brewery and the distillery and you keep out two-
thirds of the crime and vice from which we
have suffered.

We have talked much in recent years about
reform in our civic administration; we have de-
nounced in unmeasured terms graft and graf-
ters, incompetency and fraud in connection with
our City government, and no body of citizens
ever had more abundant reason for complaint
and protest than the citizens of Montreal. I
do not hesitate to say that no matter how good
a Mayor or Board of Commissioners we may
have, we shall never have a clean and truly
effective administration of civic affairs as long
as we allow the liquor traffic to have a legalized
and a recognized place among us.

Some idea of the wide ramifications of the
Liquor Traffic and its tremendous hold upon

—22—

our community may be gathered from a recent
article by Professor Stephen Leacock of McGill
University, in the Montreal Daily Star, under-
the caption, ^^Wet or Dry?’’ The article is a
most illuminating and candid one for it shows
that old John Barleycorn has not only many
friends in Montreal’s ^ ^ Underworld, ” but that
he has many friends in Montreal’s ^ Overworld,’
In it he says:

Nobody seems willing to bear witness
to how widely diffused is the habit of normal,
wholesome drinking, and of the great bene-
fits to be derived from it. The University
where I have worked for nearly twenty years
contains in its faculties a great number of
scholarly, industrious men whose life-workj
cannot be derided or despised, even by the
salaried agitator of a prohibitionist society.
Yet the great majority of them ^^drink.^^ I
use that awful word in the full, gloomy sense
given to it by the teetotaller. I mean that if
you ask these men to dinner and offer them
a glass of wine, they will take it. Some will
take two. I have even seen them take Scotch
and soda. During these same years I have
been privileged to know a great many of
the leading lawyers of Montreal, whose brains
and energy and service to the community I
cannot too much admire. If there are any
of them who do not drink,” I can only
say I have not seen them. I can bear the
same dreadful testimony on behalf of my
friends who are doctors; and the same, and
even more emphatic on behalf of all the paint-
ers, artists and literary men with whom I

—23—

have had the good fortune to be very closely
associated. ’ ’

Professor Leacock is in a position to know
of what he is speaking. He is a popular and in-
fluential citizen, with an international reputa-
tion as an author, and naturally has a very
large circle of acquaintances. When he states
in an article upon one of the most serious sub-
jects before the Canadian public that the ma-
jority of his professional friends in this city
do not hesitate to take a ‘‘drink,/’ it should lead
every citizen who has the real interests of the
city and the province at heart to pause and
think.

This article was written to strengthen the
cause of the “Wets.” I imagine that it will
have the very opposite effect and will put one
more argument at the command of the “Drys.”
It certainly will tend to shake the confidence of
many parents in the institution which he repre-
sents as being an absolutely safe one for the
education of their sons and daughters. It will
stimulate the desire among the sober and the
m.ore progressive elements of our community to
see that in this age of light and efficiency
only those who' stand for the highest will oc-
cupy the highest positions of responsibilty and
influence.

It has already convinced many that the
professor, though a reputed authority in Politi-
cal Economy, is a back number in his subject.
He is away behind the times and the spirit of
the age and needs to take a post-graduate course
in some of the many progressive parts of the
world where prohibition has been honestly and

—24—

successfully tried. The article has shown that
the professor is as far out of date in his Moral
Philosophy as he is in his Political Economy. In
referring to the drunkard class he says: ^‘It is
a pity to destroy the comfort of the home, and
amenity of social life for the sake of so small
and so worthless a fraction of humanity. ’ ’ Those
words are a plain rejection of Jesus’ law of the
survival of the weak for the German super-
man’s law of the survival of the strong. They
are anti-Christian. How far they are from Paul’s
unselfish words : — ^ ‘ It is good neither to eat
flesh, nor to drink wine, nor anything whereby
thy brother stumbleth, or is offended, or is made
weak. ”

God help us to open our eyes as citizens to
the subtility, the enormity and the iniquity of
the traffic in strong drink. If our eyes were
open we would not wait till next May for pro-
hibition; we could not tolerate the evil another
day.

It was humiliating to me to see all the
other large cities of Canada under prohibi-
tion during those anxious, critical days, when
the Dominion and^ the Empire needed every
ounce of food and energy and man-power — and
Montreal, the largest and most important city
of all, with three hundred and more bar-rooms
crowded as never before, and its distilleries and
breweries running full blast. -

Now as our boys are returning from over-
seas this traffic which did all that it could to
prevent them from doing their ‘^bit” for the
Empire in its hour of need is doing its best to
prevent them from doing their ^^bit” at home

—25—

in the great work of reconstruction.

Hardly do they put their feet upon Quebec
soil when they are approached by ^‘boot-leg-
gers’’ who smuggle into their hands bottles or
flasks of liquor, much of which has been
“doped.” The result is that, in many cases,
not only do their victims lose their senses but
their cents. Those who have just received their
pay wake up to find -it all gone. It is estimated
that our returning soldiers will receive more
than $50,000,000. That is what the Traffic is
after

An observant friend of mine, while two
trainloads of returned soldiers were delayed for
a few minutes in the Turcot yards witnessed
twenty-five sales of liquor. For several months
Dominion Square has been infested with female-
fiends who have been systematically furnishing
soldiers and sailors with flasks of whiskey.

A day or. two ago Lieutenant-Colonel Mar-
riott, 0. 0. Canadian Clearing Service at
Quebec, in commenting upon the trouble which
his staff is having with returned men under
the influence of liquor, said, “The situation is
becoming worse all the time. On Saturday
night the C. P. E. refused to pull out the train
as nearly half the party of three hundred and
fifty men were “fighting drunk” and we had
great difficulty in handling them later. Three
of them were so badly drugged from the poison-
ous liquor that they drank that they narrowly
pulled through.” Colonel Marriott said that the
whiskey runners brought the liquor down to
the trains in cases, and sold it to the soldiers
without any action being taken on the part of
the city authorities.

-26—

It is stated that a number of returned men
who had got liquor in this city, en route to
Kingston a few days ago, were in such a pitiful
condition of drunkenness that the meeting at
the station with their relatives was heart-break-
ing. It is no wonder that the feeling in On-
tario is becoming increasingly bitter against
Quebec.

And yet on the heels of these dastardly
acts committed by these paid devils of the traf-
fic, and which are stirring to the depths every
patriotic citizen throughout the Dominion, our
English morning paper ^^The Gazette,’’ comes
out with a flippant and sarcastic editorial up-
on the ^^inquisitiveness and the relentlessness’’
of ^^Dry” Ontario officials to prevent the en-
try of liquor into that province. It says:
hunt for dynamite could not be keener. The
sleuths are on all trains and at every station.
If a traveller showns concern about his suit-
case, its contents are immediately inquired into.
But the business is being carried so far that
protests are increasing in number and vehem-
ence. The result should be at least a checking
of the too enthusiastic whiskey spotters.”

Would to God that Quebec had a few of
these enthusiastic ^^whiskey-spotters” denoun-
ced by the Gazette, and many a brave lad who
has faced ^ death for the Gazette and for me
would have his scanty pay still in his pocket and
many a wife and mother would have been spared
the sickening sight of a doped” husband and
son.

—27—

The traitorous greed of the distiller, the
brewer, the saloonkeeper, the owner of a house
of prostitution ; the thirst of the man or woman
who want their drink no matter who may suf-
fer thereby, must no longer stand in the way
of the demand for a prohibition law. Only under
such a law, vigorously enforced, are the people
of Montreal and Canada safe.

The problems before us in Canada arising
from the war, the increasing social unrest, the
return of our brave boys from the front, the
expected influx of multitudes from alien lands
— these demand clearness of brain, brotherliness
of spirit and the sinking of personal and selfish
interests for the common good. Of these essential
qualities to national success and happiness the
organized Liquor Traffic, after a trial of years,
has proved itself utterly devoid.

—28—

V. THE SOCIAL EVIL.

There is a fifth master-evil in onr midst to
which I have already incidentally alluded, it is
the SOCIAL EVIL.

So-called modesty, rather prudery, has
compelled newspapers, the public platform and
even the pulpit to be almost silent in regard to
a thing that has been making fearful ravages
in society. ^ ^ Hush ! hush ! ’ ’ the refined have cried
at any public reference to it. That silence has
been false, unpardonable and criminal. Under
that policy the vice, in this and other cities, has
grown and fattened until it has become a na-
tional peril.

I have spoken of gambling and drink as
being organized vices, so is this evil. We were
startled a few years ago to learn of the exist-
ence of a large, secret syndicate, operating both
in Europe and America, for the procuring of
girls and women for immoral purposes. We
were told that it had large clearing houses and
distributing centres in nearly all large cities. It
had agents stationed at ports of entry such as
Quebec, Halifax, Montreal, Victoria, Vancou-
ver and New York. These agents watch the
incoming trains and steamers, seeking to en-
trap innocent, unwary and unprotected girls
and women. The Hon. E. W. Sims, the United
States Attorney for Chicago, who has spent
many years in investigating the subject, stated

—29—

in a pamphlet which he prepared that not less
than fifteen thousand girls were imported into
the United States as white slaves in one year,
the majority of them guileless creatures, lured
to this continent by the promise of various em-
ployments and good wages. Mr. Sims further
stated that the girls that are imported are but
a mere fraction of the number recruited for the
traffic from the cities, towns and villages of
America. In New York alone at that time there
were some thirty thousand public prostitutes.

Montreal is a strategic point in this nefar-
ious business. It is on the highway and girls
are coming and going, from and to all parts
of Canada and the United States. Employment
bureaus, registry offices, massage and manicure
parlors, moving picture places, millinery stores
and other establishments are being used as re-
cruiting stations. Men and women are patrol-
ling our streets and entering public places on
the lookout for material. The average life of a
prostitute is about five years and therefore the
supply must be maintained, and the daughters
of the poor in this city are in large part help-
ing to keep up this supply.

Rachel Swartz, a girl of sixteen, appeared
before one of our judges not long ago and told
a sad and revolting story. She went to a
^ ‘ movie ’ ’ and there a man by the name of Danti
became interested in her, entered into conversa-
tion with her, found out something about her
life and work and told her that he could get
her most profitable employment. Unsuspicious
of anything that was wrong, the innocent girl

—30—

accompanied him to a house on St. Dominique
Street. There she was locked into a room and
kept a prisoner for a month, on the threat of
death if she tried to escape. At the end of 8u
month she was removed to another house where
within a week or so she was found by her dis-
tracted father. That girPs experience has been
repeated hundreds of times in the lives of other
girls in this city. What heart-breaking stor-
ies our police authorities, immigration agents
and social workers could tell if they were free
to do so.

The Rev. John Chisholm, Presbyterian Im-
migration Chaplain, tells of the narrow
escape which one young immigrant had
in coming to this city. ^‘One day,’’ says Mr.
Chisholm, ‘^a beautiful Polish girl was among
the immigrants. She could not speak a word of
English, but I hunted around and got a cab
driver who could speak Polish. She told him
the address to which she was to be conveyed,
and which I knew to be in the red-light dis-
trict. I told the cabby to take her there, and if
my fears were confirmed to bring her right back
again. He returned in a short time, the Polish
girl still with him. It was as I feared, and we
found, upon investigation, that a procuress had
given her the address, so we had narrowly
saved her from ruin.”

About three years ago I commenced a spe-
cial study of the Social Evil as it relates to
our city. I have discovered- that the slimy trail
of this serpent leads to the homes of the rich
as well as to the poor, to the high as well as
to the low, to well-governed Westmount as well

—31—

The Most Notorious House in Canada.

No. 6 St. Justin Street

From the exterior it looks like an abandoned house, the windows
are boarded, but within it is beautifully furnished and bril-
liantly lighted. Some twenty girls or more are employed.
The owner has several other houses of the sort and all enjoy
police protection.

—32—

as to the tolerated area, officially known as
District No. 4.’^

In my investigations I have come npon
facts that have staggered me and beheld condi-
tions that will haunt me to my dying day. I
have visited the hospitals of this city and have
seen the cruel havoc which it has wrought upon
civilians and soldiers, upon little children as
well as upon those poor, deluded creatures who
have sold their bodies and souls to the devil.
It is stated that there are at least three thous-
and public prostitutes in Montreal. God only
knows how many clandestine ones there are !

In District No. 4, just to the North of our
Court House and City Hall, there were, until
very recently, from three to five hundred pest
houses. Some of these houses have been closed
of late owing to the pressure of the Dominion
Government and the good work of members of
the Committee of Sixteen, but their old occu-
pants are still here, trying to do business in
other parts of the city. Any hour of the day,
in the open street, from the windows and door-
steps, boldly and brazenly the agents of these
places have been plying their trade. Men could
not walk a block some days without being ap-
proached a dozen times. But the agents of
these institutions are not confined to any one
area. They are to be found upon our great
thoroughfares, in our squares, in the neighbor-
hood of our large hotels, stations, and military
ba-rracks, searching for their prey. Not all of
these agents are women. The cabman or the
taximan whom you employ may be one, the
barber who shaves you or even the policeman

—33—

upon his beat; he may have a part interest in
some house, and to those whom he thinks he
can trust the pass- word is given.

A few nights ago as I was waiting for a
car on Dorchester Street at Dominion Square,
I saw three fine-looking, well-dressed fellows
coming from Mansfield Street.. All three were
more or less under the influence of liquor and
trying to help one another keep to the side-
walk. I watched them cross the square to the
Windsor Hotel corner. There they were ac-
costed by two girls and after some conversation
they returned with the girls and took a taxi
on the corner of Metcalfe and Dorchester
Streets. To all who had watched the scene the
errand was too apparent. One night about eight
o^clock on Windsor Street, between St. James
and Osborne Streets I saw two girls accost
twenty men in less than that number of min-
utes.

What is the result of all this organized im-
morality in our community? One direct re-
sult is DISEASE, hideous, loathsome and dead-
ly. In an alarming degree it is spreading.
‘Mt is trebly pernicious in its effects for it
strikes the vital forces with paralysis, it infects
the innocent and the trustful and leaves a heri-
tage of woe to generations unborn.’’ Says Sec-
retary Daniels of the United States Navy, who
has carried on such a splendid crusade among
the sailors and marines. ^^It is deadlier than
small-pox or cancer or tuberculosis,^^

A leading physician in this city told me
that four-fifths of the operations performed up-
on women in our hospitals were due to this dis-

—34—

ease, as innocent or guilty sufferers. Three
times a week clinics are held in the General
Hospital for venereal cases and the average at-
tendance at each of these clinics is from one
hundred and fifty to two hundred. One physi-
cian, a specialist, informed me that he had, every
week an average of one hundred new cases.
This is the record of venereal cases treated by
one physician in general practice in this city
during the month of January 1917 ; in the first
week of the month he had 17 cases, in the sec-
ond week 18, in the third week, 22 and in the
fourth week, 49. The total number of all cases
treated by him was 439. Out of that number
106 were syphlitic — almost one in four.

One afternoon a doctor in one of our hos-
pitals said to me, '‘Did you see that man and
those two girls who just went down the corri-
dor?’^ "Yes,” I replied. "That man,” said he,
"was diseased before his marriage. His wife be-
came infected after marriage. Those two girls,
one ten years of age and the other six, are in-
fected, ruined for life.” In visiting the Social
Service Department of the General Hospital
recently, I saw coming out of the door a bent
and worn creature, with pale and wrinkled face,
scant hair, breath short and foul, groping her
way along the corridor by touching her hands
to the wall. I was told that she was married
when she was fourteen to a diseased man. She
herself soon became infected. Her child be-
came infected and died in one of our hospitals.
Her husband died and she worked for several
years as a domestic — ^diseased, terribly so, and
yet handling the food and the furnishings of

—35—

that home ! Though she looked to be a woman
of sixty she was only in her thirties.

Such are some of the effects of vice in
Montreal. What is being done to check this
foul thing? Practically little. More is really
being done to encourage and protect vice than
is being done to combat and suppress it.

Let me indicate as briefly as I can some
of the things which are contributing to vice in
our city and directly or indirectly protecting it.

—36—

CONTRIBUTORIES TO VICE

I. TEE POLICE.

That the Police are quite cognizant of vice
conditions in the city and that a large measure
of protection is being afforded many houses of
prostitution there is not the slightest doubt on
the part of those who have given any serious
study to the situation. Apart from an occa-
sional raid of which the keepers of the places
are sometimes, given due notice and to which
they have given their consent, the police are
seldom seen in that part of the city where most
of the. crimes are committed and where vice is
most rampant. For six years nearly, it has been
my duty to visit No. 4 District very frequently
in connection with my mission work, and during
that length of time I am sure that I have not
seen in that most needy of all sections more
than a dozen policemen, and the majority of
these have been standing in front of the Gen-
eral Hospital where they could do no harm.

With the guidance of an officer in plain
clothes I have gone into some of the haunts of
vice in that district, into gambling dens, opium
joints and disorderly houses, and I have been
struck with the ready recognition of the officer
on the part of the keepers, the intimacy that
existed between them and the cordialness of the
reception. In a few of the places entered there

—37—

was a look of alarm on the faces of some of
the inmates, but it was soon gone with a wave
of the officer’s hand and the significant remark,
^‘Nothing doing tonight, go on with your fun.’’

My knowledge and experience of the Police
have been confirmed by the searching report of
the Bureau of Municipal Eesearch and by some
of the evidence given in recent investigations. In
most scathing terms the report of the Bureau
denounces the force as being inefficient, tolera-
ting vice and protecting crime.

However much the police are to blame
for the vice situation here, they, after all, only
do what they are told or what is expected
from them by those who are higher up.

—38—

II. THE BENCH,

One of the last things that a citizen should
do is to criticise those who sit upon the Bench,
but the attitude of some of our magistrates in
dealing with vice has left them open to severe
censure. These men evidently possess the old
Parisian notion that prostitution is a necessary
evil and they, therefore, render their judgments
accordingly. They fine when they should im-
prison, and dismiss cases when to the layman
there is abundance of evidence to impose the
maximum penalty. The only good that fines
do is to augment the City Treasury. In fact it
is freely admitted in official circles that many
houses of prostitution exist because of their
revenue value to the city. Those in the busi-
ness can readily meet these fines out of the pro-
ceeds of a single day.

In the report of the Bureau of Municipal
Research occur these words : ‘ ‘ That hundreds of
immoral places are permitted to exist is said by
the Police Department to be due to the leniency
of the judges of the Recorder’s Court in that
prosecutions in this Court invariably result in
imposing a fine rather than more drastic pun-
ishment.” ^‘That the keepers of these houses
have no fear of any punishment other than a
fine, and no fear of anything but a temporary
interruption of business is evidenced by the fact
that with but few exceptions they pleaded guil-

—39—

ty, notwithstanding the fact that in addition to
being charged with the offense of keeping and
maintaining disorderly houses they were in
many instances complained of as having sold
liquor without licenses, and having kept liquor
on their premises for purpose of sale.’’

I understand that the raids made by the
City Police upon disorderly houses are carried
out under the authority of the Recorders who
sign the warrants and who also append a signed
order to the warrants that men found in these
houses may be released on a ten dollar cash
bail. Hundreds of men are found each year
in the houses raided by the police and the large
majority of them rather than face the Court and
the publicity connected with it forfeit their
bail. Ten dollars is a pretty cheap price to pay
for deliverance from so embarrassing a posi-
tion. If the Recorders were really determined
to suppress vice would they not fix a
considerably higher bail, a bail that would not
be so readily forfeitable? Would they not, too,
insist upon the publication of the names of male
as well as female offenders?

One of the reasons why the social evil has
such a hold upon our city is that the Bench
recognizes and applies the double standard.
There is one law for the woman, another for
the man. The man, almost invariably, is
shielded, though he is equally guilty with the
woman, often very much more so. Equity de-
mands that both sexes be treated alike, for the
buyer as well as the seller in this nefarious
business is a moral and physical menace to the
community.

—40—

The Secretary of the Montreal Juvenile
Delinquent Court in his report for the year 1918,
in commenting upon the startling fact that the
nunuber of girls arrested had doubled in two
years, makes this serious charge: large

number of these girls have been leading
immoral lives, either as inmates or frequenters
of disorderly houses ; but I cannot recall a single
instance in which a honse-keeper has been pun-
ished for permitting the defilement of girls un-
der the age of eighteen years. I have called
attention in my previous reports to this, but
there appears to be little improvement in the
situation.

The editor of our largest daily asks, ^^What
possible answer can the police or the courts
give to this truly terrible indictment? So ser-
ious a situation calls aloud for special enquiry
by the Attorney General.’’

Given a strong and aggressive Police ' De-
partment, supported by a fearless and uncom-
promising'Bench there need not be in Montreal
a single disorderly house, gambling den or street
solicitor. What New York, Chicago and other
large cities in the United States * have done
Montreal can do.

41—

in. THE LAW.

So faultily framed are some of our laws
that the culprit and the criminal could not pos-
sibly have better friends. Keen and alert law-
yers can readily find loopholes of escape for
their clients in them, cases are dismissed on
technicalities, and gross miscarriages of justice
result.

The phrase liable to a fine or imprison-
ment’’ which appears in almost every para-
graph of the Criminal Code often leads to noth-
ing worse than an apology of a penalty or a
few words of cheap advice.

That word ^‘knowingly” inserted in the
law dealing with owners of houses of prosti-
tution has saved many a scamp from his just
desserts. The harboring of prostitutes and
the white slave traffic are impossible without
a house, and one of the things sorely needed in
Canadian law is a measure that deals directly
with the landlord and makes him suffer until he
feels it when his house is used for immoral pur-
poses.

We need such an enactment as the ^in-
junction and Abatement Law” which has been
so effective in eighteen States of the American
Union and which has proved such a powerful
weapon in Chicago in dealing with commercial-
ized vice. The operation of this law is ex-
ceedingly simple. When evidence is secured

that is deemed sufficient to prove a case if it
goes to Court, an informal notice is sent to the
owner of record that his or her property is be-
ing used in violation of the law and if the alle-
gations are proved to the satisfaction of the
Court, the Court may issue an order closing
the place against its use for any purpose for a
period of one year, unless the owner gives a
bond that he will of his own motion abate the
nuisance. If no attention is paid to this in-
formal notice, a formal one is sent stating that
if the nuisance is not discontinued within a
certain number of days a writ of injunction will
be issued. So effective is this law in Chicago
that during the first ten months of its opera-
tion, out of two hundred and five cases where
notices were sent, only four cases were brought
under the ban of the law by means of an in-
junction.

Mr, C, M. Goethe, of Sacramento, Califor-
nia, a Military Welfare Commissioner, and a
prominent philanthropist, in a recent letter to
me says: do not know what we would do

without the Eedlight Abatement Act. You
know under this we sue the property, not any
individual, and also all trial by jury is elim-
inated. In this way we obtain many more con-
victions. ’ ’

The Protestant Ministerial Association of
Montreal, at a meeting held early in 1918,, pass-
ed the following recommendations made by the
Vice Committee in regard to the control of the
social evil.

(1) — The enactment of the Injunction and
Abatement Law.

—43

(2) — The raising of the age of consent from
fourteen years to eighteen, and the age of se-
duction from sixteen to twenty-one years.

(3) — Such changes in the Health Laws as
to compel physicians, under heavy penalties,
to report to the Local Board of Health, every
case of venereal disease dealt with in their
practice, and that no such case be dismissed
without a certificate of health from the
Health authorities.

(4) — That persons contemplating marriage
must furnish to the issuer of licenses, the
priest or minister, a certificate of health,
specifically indicating freedom from venereal
troubles.

(5) — The early establishment by the Pro-
vincial or Civic Government of a Woman’s
Eeformatory and Industrial Farm in the
neighborhood of Montreal, similar to the one
now in Bedford, N.Y., for delinquent women
and girls, on the cottage plan.

(6) — The establishment of redemptive
homes for the more hopeful cases of female
delinquents.

That is a most drastic and progressive pro-
gram. However slow some of us may be to
accept it in full at present, it must all be car-
ried out, I believe, if we are to deal adequately
with the situation as it confronts us in this
city and province.

44

IV. THE DEPLORABLE LACK OF RE-
FORMATIVE INSTITUTIONS.

Raiding houses of prostitution, fining the
keepers and inmates, segregation and regular
medical supervision are no solutions of the prob-
lem of the Social Evil. Prostitutes need to he
committed upon an indeterminate sentence, tc
some institution where they will not only re-
ceive correction, hut opportunities for refor-
mation. Our jails are no places for them.

The Protestant Jail for delinquent women in
this city is a disgrace and a shame to us. It com-
prises two floors of a wing of a building owned
hy a Roman Catholic sisterhood, containing the
Roman Catholic^ reformatory and redemptive
home. I found the walls of the Protestant
Jail dirty, the plaster cracked and broken in
places, the furniture scant, old and decrepit.
The kitchen range and the sideboard are curios-
ities worth travelling miles to see. Not a sec-
ond hand dealer in this city would offer such
furniture for sale in his shop. It is the most
gloomy and depressing place imaginable. In
one large room I saw twenty or more prisoners,
old and young, all huddled together doing a lit-
tle sewing — the only bit of occupation for them
except to gossip, eat, drink, sleep and think.
No tea or milk is provided except for the sick,
meat and soup are furnished three times a week.
The inmates are not permitted to go out and

—45—

—46-

The Fullum Street Jail.

The Protestant Department is on the first and second floons of the right wing. The little porch is the

Entrance. '

take the air — there is not even a verandah to
walk npon. These women and girls cannot come
out of such a place the better for their stay
They come out worse, more hardened and more
ready to return to their old, sinful ways. The
only place for such poor creatures is in some
institution like that at Bedford, N.Y., where
there is a farm of two hundred acres, an in-
dustrial school and graded cottages, where the
delinquents are studied scientifically and all en-
gage in wholesome occupations, receive instruc-
tion and have spiritual supervision.

But a reformatory and industrial farm do
not meet, wholly, the institutional requirements
of the vice situation. We must not forget that
fully fifty per cent, of the girls who go wrong
are feebleminded. While their bodies may be
sixteen or twenty years of age, their minds are
only six or ten. Look at the face of the aver-
age girl or woman in our penal institutions or
in the houses of shame and hardly a trace of
intelligence may be seen in it. She is a
stupid lump of animal flesh, putty in the hands
of designing and unscrupulous men. The jail
or the reformatory is not the place for such
people. One of the crying needs of the Prov-
ince of Quebec is a feeble-minded institution.
It would have to be a large one for there is no
province in the Dominion that has such a large
proportion of the feebleminded as Quebec.

In addition to a reformatory and a feeble-
minded institution we require a number of re-
demptive homes under direct Christian aus-
pices, similar to those in Truro, Toronto, Win-
nipeg and Edmonton, in which the Anglicans,

—47—

-^8—

The Dining Room in the Protestant Female Jail.

Note the hole in the sideboard and the stains upon the wall.

Methodists and Presbyterians are interested
through their Social Service Departments. So
little is being done by Christian people in thi^
city for the reclamation of fallen women, and
yet there was no class in society in which our
Lord was more interested and whom He treated
with greater tenderness and consideration. It
is exceedingly difficult work, but it is far from
being fruitless. Over one hundred and fifty
girls have been cared for in the homes to which
I have just referred, and led to return to a
life of virtue. One of these girls who came
to the Edmonton home with the reputation of an
incorrigible was soundly converted within a year
after her arrival. For a year or more past she
has been in Toronto qualifying herself for
Christian service. May the hearts and purses
of some of our good Montreal people open wide
so that soon we may have such institutions here
and see similar work being done.

It is gratifying to know that the Joint
Committee of Cooperating Protestant Churches
of Montreal, is now planning for a redemptive
home and farm in the neighborhood of the city.

—49—

V. LACK OF PBOFER RECREATIONAL
FACILITIES FOR YOUNG WOMEN.

We have been speaking of the need of cor-
rective, reformative and redemptive institutions,
we must not overlook the greater need of PRE-
VENTIVE institutions. The old proverb is as
true to-day as it was when it was coined, ‘^an
ounce of prevention is better than a pound of
cure. ’ ’

In every one of us there is a longing for
companionship and entertainment. That is a
natural longing and through seeking to gratify
it thousands of girls in this city are annually
led astray. It is true that many girls
sell themselves through direct or indirect econ-
omic stress — their wages are shamefully small,
and they love dress and want to look pretty and
they cannot afford it — but for one girl who sells
herself for a ribbon, ten girls sell themselves for
what a ribbon means, company and pleasure.

The people of this city have done much for
the social life of boys and young men. For
them there are all kinds of clubs and organiza-
tions, but the young women have been neglected,
and we are paying the price of that neglect
now in abnormal conditions of vice. A large
proportion of those who go wrong are domestics.
The average domestic is not treated as an in-
timate or a friend, she is just a piece of house-
hold furniture; a menial. The smallest, the

_50_

most unattractive, the most inaccessible room in
the house is given to her. As a rule she can-
not entertain her friends in her employer’s home
and so the only place for her is the street, the
park, the movie” or the dance-hall. It is said
that ninety-five per cent, of the working girls
of New York go to dance halls. No one knows
the proportion of working girls who attend these
places in our city.

One who has made a tour of some of our
popular dance halls gives the following vivid
description.

‘‘The orchestra started to play. From the
refreshment room hurried the dancers, the girls,
flushed with liquor, their eyes shining with a
strange light that betokened heightened vitality,
quickened their steps. The young men, some
reeling, exchanging coarse repartee, followed on
into the dance room with its multitude of elec-
tric lights reflected in a multitude of mirrors.

The dancers threw off any effects which
liquor might have left and away they glided,
every step attuned to the music. A girl faint-
ed. She was dragged to one of the benches that
line the walls and cognac was forced between
her teeth. And the dance went on. That was
four o’clock in the morning.”

“At a table directly overlooking the floor
in a hall the other evening sat two women, two
women who are notorious in the city. During
the whole evening they never left their seats.
Beautifully gowned, wearing large picture hats,
their wondrous furs cast carelessly on nearby
chairs, they sat and waited.

Men in evening suits joined them. There

—51—

were more bottles opened at this table than at
any other. And despite all the liquor the
women seemed to watch keenly the figures of
the dancers as they swept before them. It was
a masquerade, and the great majority of the
girls in costume wore short skirts.

After a waltz a man who had indulged too
freely led to the table a girl not more' than
seventeen. Under a mask her eyes sparkled
brightly. She moved with grace and freedom
in her short skirt, and the long hair which fell
below her waist seemed to lessen the number of
years she had known. Immediately the two
women turned their whole attention to her. They
complimented her on her beauty, praised her
costume and offered her wine. The girl seemed
embarrassed and at the same time pleased. The
wine was accepted, the glass refilled. Then
she was importuned to remove her mask. For
a long time she resisted. Meanwhile another
bottle had come and the party was becoming
boisterous. She raised her mask slightly and
when I looked again it had disappeared. Shortly
after, when the liquor had taken effect, she
willingly gave herself up to the public embrace
of the men. Why do women attend the dances
and never dance? Why do men flirt with the
girls, dance with them, then lead them to the
little table in the corner where the women wait
and watch?’’

‘‘Why do you come here?” was the ques-
tion asked of a ^irl who was a regular frequent-
er of the dance-hall. “Why,” said she, “the
music is good, the floor is better than any other
that I know of or can afford, and every one I

—52—

know conies here. I danced Monday, Tuesday,
Thursday and Friday nights till after two
o’clock. Tomorrow afternoon I am going to
take part in the waltzing contest.

This girl is a waitress in a restaurant in
the downtown district. She is at work at seven
o’clock in the morning, and leaves at eight in
the evening. On Sunday afternoon, while the
dancing contest* was being held, she fainted, and
it was three hours before she was sufficiently
recovered to be taken to her home.

That is but one incident. The same girls
and the same men are seen every night. For
hours they whirl under the low ceiling of a
poorly ventilated room. Their tired bodies
are kept going by liquor. And then they step
out of the overheated atmosphere into the bitter,
cold air of morning. A few hours sleep and
then to work.

The majority of these dance-halls are wide-
open door-ways to places of prostitution. Some
are in convenient proximity to a bar-room or
so-called hotel; others enjoy a special license
from the Provincial Government which permits
them to sell intoxicating liquors at all hours
of the night, seven nights in the week. The
profits in one night’s sale sometimes are enor-
mous.

But while every moral reformer sees so
much to denounce in the popular dance halls of
Montreal and in other places of amusement and
recreation, I fear that many of us are forgetful
of the fact that they are the only places that
are open and convenient to thousands of our
young people, the majority of whom I believe

—53—

do not attend them from any improper
motive. They go to these places to secure that
relaxation from toil and care which their na-
ture. craves and which others, more fortunate,
satisfy in beautiful drawing-rooms, in golf and
other clubs, in the round of gaiety at the sea-
shore and the mountains. The best way to
abolish these low and vicious places of amuse-
ment is to substitute for them resorts as near
like them as possible, only leaving out those un-
necessary accompaniments which are essentially
evil.

Every public dance hall in the city should
be licensed by the civic authorities and put in
charge of a properly qualified police matron,
with full power to see that decency and order
are preserved. It should close early and no
liquors should be allowed upon the premises.

The Church, the Y.W.C.A., and other phil-
anthropic organizations cannot too soon get be-
,hind a large and earnest movement to afford
adequate recreational facilities for the young
women of this city.

—54—

VI. THE ^^MOVIES.^^

The ^ ^ MOVIE in a little more than a
decade, has become the greatest educational fac-
tor in the life of many nations. More persons
are being taught by it, many times over, than
by any other institution. It is the People^ s
University.^’

In the United States there are close to
twenty-thousand moving picture places with a
daily attendance of over ten millions, and with
hundreds of millions of dollars invested in the
business.

The Montreal Witness, in an interesting ar-
ticle a few years ago, stated that there were tlien
sixty picture shows in Montreal, accommodating
thirty thousand people. There were from three
to nine shows a day, Sunday included, and in
the evening the houses were crowded to the
doors. The estimated attendance was half-a-mil-
lion a week, a little less than the total popula-
tion of the City. Five times as many people
went to the movies as to the theatres. The fig-
ures of the Witness if brought up to date would
show a very marked increase.

Miss Kate Davis, one of the best known so-
cial workers in the United States, says: ‘‘This
country and every other country invaded by the
motion picture show faces one of the greatest
problems that has ever been dealt with by any
nation. ”

—55—

No existing institution is so fraught with
tremendous possibilities for good as the movie’’
but, unfortunately, it has in too many cases fall-
en into the hands of unscrupulous managers
who care not what appears upon the screen or
takes place between pictures on the stage so long
as the door receipts are satisfactory.

All motion pictures are supposed to be
carefully censored, but what shall we say of the
work of the censors when Warden Simpson of
Jackson Prison, Michigan, in a recent address in
Detroit, declared that although there were about
fifteen hundred moving picture shows in Michi-
gan he found it a hard task to get films clean
enough to show to his prisoners. He said that
most of the films had suggestive and harmful
representations of crime.

Our Juvenile and Police Courts are crowd-
ed with boys and girls often accused of unbe-
lievable crimes such as arson, burglary, street-
thieving, hold-ups and murder. Crime is in-
creasing two-and-a-half times faster among chil-
dren than among adults, and judges and social
workers agree that the crime-creative film is in
no small degree responsible for this condition of
things. In the annual report of the Juvenile De-
linquent Court of Montreal for 1918 we read
that the increase of juvenile crime over the pre-
vious year was seventeen per cent, and the num-
ber of girls arrested has doubled in two years.

Judge Ben Lindsey found a gang of girl
burglars in Denver some time ago. They were
Sunday School girls, born in respectable famil-
ies, aged eight, ten and twelve. They told the

—56—

Judge that when they did not know how to
commit a crime they went to the movies’’ and
studied films until they got the idea. Equipped
with this knowledge success attended their ef-
forts. When the girls were captured they were
trying to pass twenty dollar bills for candy.

Judge Choquet of our Juvenile Court has
again and again denounced the moving picture
theatres of this city. On one occasion he said.

^ ^ Permit me to say with what regret I have not-
iced the bad influence of moving picture shows
upon children. In every case without exception
the children brought before me whether Protes-
tants or Catholic were in the habit of attending
these shows, and I have found in several cases
that this had been the cause of their downfall.”

While the censorship of the films shown in
our local theatres has considerably improved in
late years, there is still much room for improve-
ment. Scarcely a day passes but films repre-
senting domestic unfaithfulness, burglary, ab-
duction, suicide and murder are exhibited.
These representations of evil-doing are seeds of
crime and like deadly poison are finding their
way to the imagination and heart of many an
onlooker. And when with such pictures there
are associated the various incidents of cheap
vaudeville it is not to be wondered at if many of
our youth are becoming morally callous.

On Friday night, February the Seventh of
this year, while returning from a mission for
foreigners, I dropped in to the Maple Leaf Pal-
ace on St. Lawrence Boulevard, just above St.
Catherine Street. The film that was being shown

—57—

■58-

One op Our “Public” Schools on St. Lawrence Boulevard — “The Maple

Leap Palace. ’ ’

as I entered contained an elopement, a bank rob-
bery, a murder and an attempted lynching. The
vaudeville between pictures was of the tawd-
riest kind. Two men dressed as hoboes enter-
tained the crowd with coarse jokes, profanity
and revolver shooting. A burlesque marriage
was performed by one of the hoboes decked out
with a silk hat, a huge white tie and a long-
tailed coat. The marriage ceremony was par-
odied much to the enjoyment of the crowd.
Painted girls appeared at intervals in dances
with the minimum allowance of clothing re-
quired by law and with songs and gestures de-
cidedly suggestive. One young woman who sang
and danced alone was particularly revolting.
Her main purpose seemed to be to play upon
the sexual susceptibilities of the young
men present. Behind me sat two little girls un-
der twelve years of age in the care of a young
woman, watching with keen interest the pro-
ceedings of the evening. I could not help ask-
ing myself the question as I looked upon that
crowd of young people, ^^What shall the har-
vest beT’

—59—

VII. THE PREVAILING IMMODESTY OF
FEMALE ATTIRE.

For several years now it has been the fash-
ion for women and girls to appear in public
with as little above their waist line as the pol-
ice authorities will permit.

The time was when society women restrict-
ed the use of the decollete to the ballroom and
the drawing room, but now it is almost the ex-
ception to see a woman or girl, whatever her
rank in society, with a high necked dress even
upon the street or in church. The modesty of
our mothers has been flung to the wind by their
daughters and as a result we are reaping the
whirlwind.

The demoralizing influence of such immod-
esty upon young men can only be imagined and
it has placed all young women who follow such
a senseless fashion in the moral ‘^danger zone.’^

A friend of mine handed me this approp-
riate bit of poetry a few days ago :

^‘When every pool in Eden was a mirror.

And unto Eve her dainty charms proclaimed.
She went undraped, without a fear of horror.

Or thought that she had need to feel ashamed.

It was only when she’d eaten of the apple
That she became inclined to be a prude.

And found that evermore she’d have to grapple
With the much debated problem of the nude.

—60—

Thereafter she devoted her attention, her time,
And all her money to her clothes;

That was the beginning of convention.

And modesty as well, we now suppose.

But changes came about in fashions recent;
Now girls conceal so little from the men;

It seems that in the name of all that’s decent
Someone ought to pass the apple round again.”

—61—

VIIL THE DELINQUENT.HOME,

The deepest, the basic cause of crime and
vice next to an unregenerate heart is a
DELINQUENT HOME.

Miss Katherine Day, the late Superinten-
dent of the Maritime Home for girls in Truro,
N.S., says that bad home conditions are prim-
arily responsible for seventy-five per cent, of
the cases found in that institution. These
girls have lacked the protection and guidance
of wise and good fathers and mothers. They
have been allowed too much of their own way,
permitted to choose their own companions and
pleasures and left to run the streets while their
mothers, perhaps, were compelled to go out and
work to supplement the family income. Thus
these girls from babyhood have been doomed to
a life of sin and shame.

The Juvenile Courts of our cities, with
their multiplying cases, are the modern indict-
ments of the incompetency and failure of the
modern home. Chief Justice Bussell of New
York, says that three-fourths of the cases which
congest the calendar of the Juvenile Courts of
that city are the direct and obvious result of
improper guardianship. What is true of New
York is true of Montreal.

In the report of our Juvenile Court for 1918
we notice that there were 106 cases of deser-
tion of children and 80 cases of neglected chil-
dren. Fourteen per cent, of the delinquents

—62—

were unable to read or write and forty-two per
cent, were unemployed. ^'Idleness/’ states
the report, ‘^goes hand in hand with delinquen-
cy, and it is regrettable that the law enforcing
school attendance is not in vogue.’’

Not long ago there appeared in the Juven-
ile Court four children of Old Country parents
living in Verdun. They were all of school age
and yet were not attending school. They could
neither read nor write. The mother was slat-
ternly and immoral and the husband did not
seem to care whether she was or not.

Yet in the face of these Court figures and
the deplorable illiteracy of Quebec, there are.
those in this province, leaders in Church and
State, who are absolutely opposed to compul-
sory education on the ground that the State
by such a measure interferes with the rights
of parents. The idea that a father or a mother
may do what he or she will with his or her
own has long ceased in progressive countries to
be officially recognized as either good law, good
m^orals or good sense. When parents are un-
able to govern their children properly and give
them that preparation for life which they re-
quire, then it becomes the duty of the State, for
its own protection, to undertake the charge.

A court that is very much needed in Mont-
real is one for DELINQUENT PARENTS, a
court that will stop the manufacture of the ma-
terial which the Juvenile Court tries to patch
up into something which may ultimately develop
into a good citizen. Nine out of ten of the
children who appear in court are not the real
culprits, the real culprits are the parents. By

—63—

the bad example of the father or the mother or
of both, by their folly, negligence, ignorance
and lack of discipline the child has become a
criminal, or a victim of vice.

Mrs, J, A. Henderson, Superintendent of
the Hervey Institute, at the last annual meeting
cited this case illustrating the condition of the
homes from which some of the children in the
Institute were drawn: Two girls aged six and
eight years were admitted to the Institute two
years ago. On the day of their admission the
older girl said ^ ‘ I have two daddies. One is over-
seas and the other lives with my mother.’’

These children,” said Mrs. Henderson, ^‘had
been virtually left on the street by the woman
who called herself ^mother.’ ”

The Church has its part in the training of
the children of our city, the School has its part,
but the great responsibility rests upon the par-
ents. One ounce of good father or good mother
is worth a pound of school teacher or parson.

These are heart-searching times. Never were
young people subject to such temptations. Never
was there greater need for intelligent and con-
secrated parenthood and of homes buttressed by
devotion, good example and prayer.

But the vice and the crime of the children
of our city cannot all be laid at the door of
parents. No small part of the blame must be
laid upon society itself because of its continued
toleration of vice and crime-making conditions.
Think of the homes that thousands of our popu-
lation are condemned to dwell in because of
their poverty, small, cramped, poorly-construct-
ed, poorly-lighted, poorly-ventilated, cheerless
—64—

rookeries, facing lanes and streets into which
God’s sunlight seldom comes. We have slums
in Montreal that have no parallel on the con-
tinent, housing conditions that are a disgrace to
Christian civilization.

At a meeting of some citizens interested in
Montreal’s housing problem, held a few nights
ago, Mr. U. H. Dandiirand stated that a study
of 342 houses in various parts of the city, made
recently by the Housing Committee of the
Charity Organization Society, showed that 15
per cent, of these houses had damp rooms, 32
per cent, unsanitary xhumbing conditions, 30
per cent, inadequately lighted rooms. There
were 24 houses in which there were three and
more persons per room and 106 in which the
investigators found two or more persons per
room. There were cases of tuberculosis in 52
of the houses.

One of our newspaper men became interest-
ed in a lad who had appeared in court charged
with running away from home. When he
first saw him he was at home in bed. His
home was up a dirty flight of stairs that led
from a filthy street. In bed with him were
his four-year-old brother and his five-year-old
sister. The room in which they slept had no
windows. No fresh air or light could enter it
directly. There were three other rooms and
there were three other children, the parents and
two boarders — ten persons in a small four-room-
ed house ! Do you blame a boy for trying to
run away from a place like that! That home
was a menace to the health and the morality
not only of its occupants, but a menace to the
—65—

—66—

The Ward with the gn^eatest number of dots contains the Redlii^ht District. It shows
thirty per cent more juvenile delinquents than any other ward. The housing condi-
tions are very bad.

health and morality of the whole community. No
punishment is too great for landlords who can
draw rent from such death-traps. Some of
these landlords live in beautiful homes, on broad
avenues in the suburbs. If I were a judge, I
would be tempted to compel these landlords, if
they came up before me for sentence, to exchange
residences with their tenants for five years. This
would either cure or kill them.

—67

IX. THE WANT OF A CIVIC CONSCI-
ENCE.

Montreal has considerable conscience, but
unfortunately for the city, it is put up in
small quantities. It appears in individuals
and in groups, but it has not yet crystallized
into strong public sentiment, conviction and ac-
tion.

Once only during the last decade has Mont-
real shown the semblance of a civic conscience
and that was shortly after the appearance of
the Cannon Eeport when the city rose in its
might and put out of the Council nearly every
one of those aldermanic grafters who had help-
ed to make the name of our city a byword on
the continent.

If Montreal had a civic conscience, the
number of its electors who take the trouble to
go to the polls in important and critical times
would not be so shamefully small. At the last
civic elections, when great issues were at stake
out of 150,000 possible votes only 75,000 were
polled. With such indifference and apathy we
cannot hope for much better things in our civic
administration and life. The curse of this
city is the bad citizenship of good men.

The forces of evil among us are alive,
awake, persistent and organized. The forces
for righteousness must too, be awake, persis-
tent and organized. ORGANIZED VICIOUS-
NESS can only be met by ORGANIZED
RIGHTEOUSNESS. With organized righte-
ousness the police would do their duty, the
judges would feel that public sentiment was
—68—

behind their decisions, the law would be
rightly interpreted and enforced, and a new
spirit would pervade the life of the city.

Let us as citizens forget our creeds, our racial
distinctions and prejudices, and unite and co-
operate in a forward movement in the cause of
good citizenship, and Montreal will be re-^
deemed from the thraldom of VICE.

-69—

The use of the striking cartoon on the cover of
this booklet and the map-chart has been kind-
ly given by the Montreal Daily Star.

A Literature Fund has been formed for the
publication of works similar to this on , Civic,
Provincial and National betterment.

Any reader of this booklet desiring to help the
Fund is asked to communicate either wfth
the author or Mr. C. W. Baker, 91 Commercial
Union Building, Montreal.^

-70—

OTHER WORKS BY THE AUTHOR

The Challenge of Montreal.
The Unchurched Masses.
The Missionary Statesman.
The Son of A Missionary.